Base building guide
A good base doesn’t need to be unbeatable — it needs to make attackers waste troops and fall short of the star they wanted. This guide covers the core principles behind strong Clash of Clans layouts, then how war, farming and trophy bases differ, with per-Town-Hall advice.
Design around your best defenses — see the defense guide for which ones to build the base around.
Core layout principles
- Centralise your heavy hitters. The Town Hall (weaponised from TH12), Eagle Artillery, Inferno Towers and Scattershots belong in the core, protected by everything else, so attackers must commit their whole army to reach them.
- Compartmentalise with walls. Break the base into many small walled cells rather than a few big ones. Compartments slow wall-breakers, funnel troops away from the core, and stop a single Jump Spell from opening the whole base.
- Spread your splash and air defenses. Wizard Towers, Mortars and Air Defenses should cover the whole base evenly — a corner with no splash is a free landing zone for spam.
- Create a funnel problem. Uneven exteriors and buildings placed to pull troops the “wrong” way make it hard for attackers to funnel their army into the core. Good bases leak troops around the outside.
- Hide and spread traps. Giant Bombs against Hogs, Air Bombs and Seeking Air Mines against Balloons/LavaLoon, and Tesla farms in dead space punish the exact armies that beat your Town Hall level.
War / anti-3-star
War bases only care about preventing three stars — losing 60% is fine if the third star never lands. Centralise the Town Hall, ring it with your best defenses, and design asymmetrically so attackers can’t just copy a known plan. Anti-air and anti-spam trap placement matters most.
Farming / anti-loot
Farming bases protect resources, not the Town Hall. Bury your storages deep in separate compartments and leave the Town Hall exposed — a free star costs the attacker nothing and gives you the one-day shield, while your loot stays safe.
Trophy / hybrid
Pushing trophies means protecting the Town Hall (it holds a star). A hybrid base tucks the Town Hall inside while still shielding storages in nearby compartments — a compromise that defends both trophies and a decent chunk of loot.
Base advice by Town Hall
- TH7–TH9: Air Defenses win these levels — spread all of them so no Dragon or LavaLoon lane is safe, and centralise your Air Defenses inside walls.
- TH10–TH11: Build around your Inferno Towers and Eagle Artillery. Decide single vs multi Inferno based on the meta you face, and protect the Eagle so it activates before it dies.
- TH12: The weaponised Town Hall (Giga Tesla) is a real defense — centralise it and let its explosion punish troops that cluster on it.
- TH13+: Scattershots become the anchor of the core alongside the Town Hall and Inferno. Modern spam (Root Riders, Super Archers) means good compartments and trap discipline matter more than ever.
Don’t obsess over designing your own layout early on — a proven copied base plus good trap placement beats a homemade one. Spend the saved time upgrading offense instead, using the upgrade priority guide.
Compartments, not decoration
A base layout is a set of decisions about how long an attacker spends inside your walls, and almost nothing else. Every compartment an attacker has to break is time your defences spend firing. This is why a compact base with many small compartments outperforms a large base with a decorative outer ring, even when the second one looks more finished.
The corollary is that walls between compartments matter far more than walls on the perimeter. A perimeter wall delays an attacker by a few seconds; an internal wall forces a decision about where to spend a Jump Spell or a Wall Wrecker. Upgrade inward-facing walls first.
Where to put the things that matter
Your Town Hall and storages belong in the core, both because they hold what the attacker wants and because the Town Hall is a defence from TH12 onward. Your Clan Castle belongs central enough that its troops cannot be lured out from the edge — a Clan Castle that can be baited with a single Barbarian is worth nothing on defence.
Air defences want to be spread rather than clustered, so that a single Rage-and-Freeze does not remove all of them at once. Splash defences want to cover the storages, because that is where ground armies inevitably converge.
Copying a base is fine; understanding it is better
Copying a well-regarded layout is a perfectly reasonable shortcut, and better than an improvised base at almost every Town Hall. The failure mode is copying one and then never adjusting it as your own buildings upgrade at different rates, which leaves a layout designed around defences you do not yet have.
The habit worth building is to look at your own defence log every week or so. If the same attack strategy is beating you repeatedly, the base is telling you exactly what it is missing, and that is far more useful than any general advice — including this page.